To him everything
was altered, and nothing could ever make the relation between them what
it had been. No tenderness of affection, no length of association, no
faithfulness of service, could stand for an instant against a single one
of the many blows that his morbid self-love had received. For self-love
like his is an incurable disease of sensibility, a spreading canker
which poisons the whole character, as an unsound spot in the flesh
poisons the whole body. To those who have not come in close contact with
this form of morbidity, it may seem impossible that William Pressley's
love for Ruth, which had been real so far as it went, should have
hardened into dislike almost as soon as the words that wounded it had
left her lips. Yet that was precisely what had taken place, quite
naturally and even inevitably. He had loved her as much as he was
capable of loving, mainly because of the deep gratification which he
found in her great esteem for himself. No one else had ever come so near
granting his self-love all that it demanded. Her sweet presence, always
looking up to him, had been like the perpetual swinging of a censer
perpetually giving the fragrant incense that his vanity craved.
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